When you run and operate a website, you should strive to keep it in order and under control. When doing so, clients and potential ones will check out your site and enjoy your content. Otherwise, if you have a lot of issues with your Web pages, you will cost yourself some business. Furthermore, Google takes this into consideration when looking at website rankings and where to place your site in the organic rankings. With this in mind, Google now looks at secure websites and gives them an extra boost. Here are a few reasons why Google values safe websites.

Legitimacy

Above all else, when determining SEO rankings, Google will want to discover and reward sites that are real. Now, this may sound funny, but in the past, plenty of site owners would make fake websites full of spam or targeted offers. This was not good for visitors as they would not enjoy any true value from the website. When discovering a spam or fake site, Google will knock it out of oblivion and the site owner will not see any traffic.

For this reason, it is obviously important that you show Google and the other search endings that you mean business. When seeing a secure site, Google will know that you have a real website with a legitimate product or service. In reality, a spammer or someone who wants to make a cheap AdSense site will not take much time to use SSL or other methods to secure a site. For this reason alone, if you want to do well in the organic rankings, you must set up your site with https ability. When doing so, you will go a long way in maintaining stable rankings.

Long-term

If you have SSL on your site, it is obvious to most people that you plan to stick around for the long-term. This is important to Google as they want to give their customers value. You must realize, when looking for something important, people will trust Google and will want to land on a website offering true value to its users. Otherwise, in the long run, Google will suffer as the leading search engine wants clients to find what they seek.

So, when you think about it, you will understand why Google would want to place an SSL site on the first pages for many keywords. In the long run, even if you do not have a login system or credit card payment setup, you should consider an SSL certificate as you will go a long way in showing Google and other search engines you are serious about your online ventures and value the long-term strategy you have laid out. Otherwise, your site will look like any other and you will struggle to get on the first page of Google.

Quality

As mentioned, Google has, and always will, value a quality Web page. Meaning, when looking at a page with a lot of great information and plenty of happy customers, you will likely encounter a website with https security.

Think about it for a minute. When you land on a great site such as your email provider, bank or even a local restaurant, it probably has an SSL certificate. Without this, many will leave the site as they will not want to leave it up to chance. As people use other devices and become more aware of the situation, they are likely to convert to this way of thinking. When this happens, not only will you get more traffic, but current clients are likely to stay on your site. For this reason, if you want to do well in the organic search rankings and see your site thrive, you must have an up-to-date SSL certificate. Simply put, if you are truly in it for the long-term, you need to invest a small amount of cash in getting your site secure for every user.

Luckily, with a bit of cash and a couple of hours of your time, you can do so with ease. Then, in the short and long run, you will see your site thrive as people from all over will enjoy a site of high quality with all the necessary safety precautions

Throw up fewer errors

One metric Google takes a look at is the errors on your page. When using old and outdated code, you are likely to cause browser errors to your visitors. While this may not seem like a big deal on your end, it can cause a visitor to grow frustrated. Other times, people with older or outdated computers will struggle to load your website. For this reason, you should take the time to buy and install an SSL certificate. With this ten-minute job, you will see your pages load without any errors. Furthermore, people will take notice and feel more secure about going to your website.

If you have any sort of errors, whether with your SSL certificate or code, you need to fix them quickly as your site will never recover in the rankings and you will have a hard time impressing customers. Remember, with one or two errors, you can see an otherwise perfect site suffer in the organic search rankings.

So, if you can fix it up and make sure it is secure, you will have an upper hand against your competition. This is true even if they have an older page with more content as small errors will kill their SEO strategy.

Visitors

Now when looking at your site, Google will take notice when you have a lot of people come and stay for a long time. On the other hand, when you have a high bounce rate, you will see your site suffer. A bounce rate is the rate in which a person comes to your site and leaves without clicking another link on your site. When a potential client lands on your site, they will want to see a secure page. When they do not, they are likely to leave your site never to return.

On the other hand, if you have a secure site and let customers know this, you will rise in the rankings as Google values a site where people stay for a long time. This is a smart reason for you to rush out and install an SSL certificate. While this is true, you must make sure to do it right as one error can cause you to waste your time and money. Without a doubt, once you test it and make sure it works well, you should advertise this fact and let clients know your site is fully secured.

If you run a website, you must think of the future. While it is easy to make one on the cheap, you must invest in a few things. For starters, you should build a great site that people enjoy. Not only that, you must offer relevant, interesting and unique content that will set your site ahead of the competition. Finally, you must install an SSL certificate as customers will take notice. Furthermore, with https, Google and the leading search engines will value your site and you will see it zoom to the top for many organic search terms.

If you are a small business owner or if you have an innovative product idea that is ready for the market, the most effective way of acquiring customers and drawing attention to what you have to offer is by utilizing the internet. Creating a website is one of the most effective ways of advertising your product, but opening a website alone does not guarantee foot traffic. There are different methods a business owner can use to increase website traffic, but the most successful way is by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO consists of various formulas and keywords that ensure a website appears on the top of someone’s search results.

In order to attract visitors to their websites, many business owners are turning to SEO service Companies to increase customers without having to go through the trouble of dealing with SEOs on their own. These companies not only offer website design options, but they also ensure your website appears higher in search engine results – thus attracting more foot traffic to your site. The following are ten things businesses look for in a SEO company in order to make their business more successful.

Fees

SEO companies charge various amounts of fees for their services, but some companies’ pricing is more competitive than others’ pricing. The amount of money a business owner is willing to pay for SEO services depends on his or her needs and what the company offers. For example, many small business owners look for SEO service providers who offer a nominal, one-time fee and who charge an affordable amount to maintain the SEO service as long as the website is up and running.

Small business owners typically prefer SEO providers who do not charge a monthly fee that exceeds thousands of dollars; SEO charges should be equivalent to the services provided. In other words, do not pay for services that are not applicable, and do not pay for a company who does not deliver.

Location

When beginning the search for the right SEO company for the company, business owners should search SEO providers with respect to their own geographic location. If the SEO company is local, business owners can speak with their provider in person rather than having to rely on internet or telephone communication.

Furthermore, SEO firms that are in close proximity with local business owners are more apt to handle small businesses and the type of SEO required to boost internet traffic for their respective sites. While business owners are not required to limit their SEO company to a local firm, many choose their SEO based on its location due to their product knowledge and community reputation.

Reputation

Even if your chosen SEO provider’s website does not appear in the top ten search results, it is not necessarily because the company is incompetent or insufficient. Savvy business owners know to check Ripoff Report or the Better Business Bureau to make sure the company they’ve chosen is not merely running a scam. Furthermore, business owners will research SEO companies’ reviews.

A thorough investigation into testimonials will help determine just how successful an SEO company is at bringing in internet traffic.

Increase in Ranking

One of the more obvious aspects business owners look for in an SEO company is their ability to increase their websites’ ranking in search engine results. Business owners will look to testimonials and reviews for these rankings, but they will also check with the firm itself as well as conduct their own research. Knowing what sites an SEO company is responsible for enables small business owners to perform their own searches and see whether or not those sites show up high on an internet search.

If those sites do not show up, or if the sites show up on Bing! But not Google, business owners must take these factors into consideration before choosing that SEO company to provide services for their websites.

Link Building

Business owners who are interested in SEO services are aware of the fact that links play a large role in the algorithm that determines which sites are displayed prominently and which sites are not when one conducts a search on an internet search engine.

Business owners are more likely to choose an SEO company that ensures link freshness, links with trustworthy sites, and anchor texts and keywords that trigger search engines. Before choosing an SEO provider, savvy business owners will be sure to inquire about the company’s link building services.

Retargeting

Another SEO service business owners are interested in is retargeting. Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that strategically places ads for your business on other sites visited by customers who have viewed your website. SEO companies who provide this service must ensure their retargeting services are ethical and effective, as spam is a consequence many business owners would prefer to avoid. This option is sought after most by established businesses.

PPC Management

PPC Management, or the management of Pay-Per-Click advertisements is an SEO service many new business owners are interested in. SEO services that provide PPC charge a small fee every time an advertisement is clicked on by a potential customer, and the fee ranges depending on the placement of the ad (whether on a linked website or a search engine). It is important to compare competitors’ prices, as this service is largely dependent upon what business owner is trying to accomplish.

Ongoing Services

Experienced business owners know that SEO companies who promise instant results without any ongoing maintenance sound too good to be true – because they are too good to be true. Business owners look for SEO providers that offer consultations and continued support as the business grows. If your SEO company does not provide more than a one-time service, it might be time to find a new provider.

Reputation Management

Many business owners are aware of the horror stories. One bad review leads to a dozen bad reviews, and if you have a spiteful competitor who is willing to cross ethical lines in order to tarnish your reputation, you will lose business.

Reputation management keeps the negativity in check and ensures your website and company will establish and then maintain raving reviews and a high ranking in comparison with other sites and in search engine results. SEO companies provide reputation management services that vary depending on the desires of the business owner, so be sure to ask about specific services provided.

Content Marketing

In order for any online business to be profitable, business owners must maintain excellent content marketing. Without content marketing, search engines will not pick up your website, and consumers will breeze past it as if it were not there at all. Content marketing encompasses aspects of online businesses such as leads, brand awareness, customer service, and customer retention.

Many business owners are too busy to run their business and take care of their online content marketing. Efficient content marketing is the foundation upon which most successful online businesses are built.

Today, most consumers make their purchases through an online format. For business owners who want to make the most of their companies, hiring an SEO company to increase internet traffic will increase sales and improve their companies’ reputation.

Google Adwords, established in 2000, brought into being the idea that marketers could dissect the algorithm in order to serve up landing pages and online offers that placed highly in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The race was on for people trying to elbow their way to the first page of the SERPs. At that point, it was all about advertising. Marketers were trying to make sure that their online copy was the one people viewed most often. It was the same game that advertisers played when they tried to get the most views in a television spot playing during the Super Bowl or bought a one-page ad in a big magazine. The idea in advertising is to get the most views by hogging attention in strategic ways in particular high-publicity media channels. However, two things changed SEO from being totally advertising to a more public relations role: Google updates and social networking.

Google Adwords and the Need for Updates

Google may be a free service for billions of people who search it, but it is a business never-the-less. Much of its revenue comes from its advertising program: Adwords. While savvy online marketers were busy gaming the system to get free advertising by stuffing keywords into content and spamming links designed to fool the Adwords system into serving their pages up first, Google was busy perfecting their business to keep activity from damaging their own business model. Updates like Panda, Hummingbird, and Penguin tanked more than one website’s advertising strategy. It made it clear to business owners that Google would no longer tolerate poor quality, attention-hogging, content by making it almost impossible to use their search engine simply to advertise a product offering. Instead, they would be forced to contribute content that created value for the Internet community, if they wanted Google to notice them at all. It was no longer about being attention hogs, it was about making genuine online connections and relaying information that was valuable to the community. The shift from advertising to public relations solidified with the introduction of SEO strategies that no longer could rely on mindless keywords and arbitrary links. Now, marketers had to provide truly interesting and unique content that provided some value to the community. However, the game had already started changing with the introduction of social networking in 2004.

Social Networking

Facebook emerged in 2004 and social networking began to influence how people shared information online. Sites like Twitter and LinkedIn created a way for people to share more information, but now the curators of that information were your peers, not a large organization that you could manipulate with algorithm-hunting SEO strategies. To get noticed on a social networking site, it meant that marketers had to adapt towards creating one-on-one relationships that built a social brand that created trust. Without it, your friends and followers would not bother sharing your information because they would not risk losing their own friends and followers for the offense of social spamming. If you weren’t into public relations before social networking took flight, all of a sudden it became a requirement, simply to compete with others getting all the online shares and likes.

Algorithm-Hunting SEO versus PR SEO

There are stark changes in how a modern-day Internet market approaches SEO these days. It starts at the simple keyword level and goes forward into how that information is shared online. Here are a few different ways, the two models differ.

• • Keywords – The Hummingbird Google update introduced the concept of semantic keyword searching versus coding keywords. In layman’s terms, Google is more interested in what a keyword search means, not what keywords were actually typed into the search engine. This way, they don’t pull up pet accessories when someone types in the query: ”Why am I in the dog house?” Instead, Google now understands that this is a query about relationships, not pets. Thus, the content of your online copy is far more important than the keywords. If you want to place highly for a topic such as relationships, you have to provide a lot of quality content on relationships. The keywords alone will no longer sway Google. What you need to do is community outreach and get into the mind of your reader to make sure your content provides actual value.

• • Publishing – It’s no longer reasonable to assume that publishing on your own website is enough to draw attention to your offers through Google searches. Business owners who want to generate buzz for their offerings have to be involved in social networking. Content marketing is an integral part of SEO, including posting status updates on places like Facebook and Twitter. You can still use hashtags and keywords, but some sites also deal more with images and videos than they do with textual content. You will need to include more than one type of content to keep people interested on a social level. Other content will be viewed in a smartphone and will need mobile-friendly content.

• • Creating Buzz – To create excitement for an offer, in the past, an Internet marketer might have looked to high-ranking pages and site to share that content. They might try to get a retweet from people who had thousands of followers as opposed to the one with just a few friends and followers. They might try to get that person to post a link back to their pages. This is getting harder to do without being penalized for spamming or inappropriate links. It also missed the opportunity to create buzz on a local level. That’s why more marketers are creating buzz in a more social manner, by networking on various sites, not just one social network and one website. Google+ may be the late-comer in the social networking venues, but it is the one tied into the SERPs more, thus it makes sense for marketers to have a presence there, too.

• • Geographic Marketing – One of the biggest benefits to SEO was the ability to enter a global market. However, some businesses soon realized it wasn’t necessary to market the world when they’re selling pizza in a particular neighborhood restaurant. In that situation, businesses had to create positive public relations in their chosen demographic first, to compete successfully in their area. This could be achieved by cultivating good online reviews, shares, and likes from people in their own area. This cements the idea that you have to connect to your chosen demographic to outsell your competitor, instead of focusing on just issuing copy or trying to chase the Google SERPs tail.

There are distinct differences in the way SEO is approached today to when it was initially developed. Marketers want to make sure that they continue to place highly in the SERPs by creating goodwill among their customers, readership, and sponsors. That is more a public relations role than a sales advertiser. It means being genuine, providing high quality copy, and integrating the strategy with good old-fashioned one-on-one connections to fuel interest and excitement for your online offers. Those businesses that take their public relations role seriously will end up naturally ranking higher and win out in the end.

Now, when looking at algorithm updates, a lot of people fear their site will fall off the top pages of Google. This was the case in the past as many site owners would use techniques Google and other search engines did not take kindly to. In the past, site owners would routinely buy hundreds of low quality links, post bad content and copy it from other sources. In response, Google knocked these sites out of oblivion and left many site owners wondering what’s next. However, if you are a small business owner, you should realize the last Panda update was not harsh and it actually, in the long run, probably helped you. Here are five reasons why this is the case.

Real content

Above all else, if you are a business owner, you will provide real content. A company will need to make a website with multiple pages from contact us to product description pages. Not only that, many entrepreneurs use a blog as a way to communicate with people from all over the world. On the other hand, people who want to run a spam site or one to make money from advertisements often put up repetitive and uninteresting content written by software programs. For this reason alone, if you are an entrepreneur, you should not worry too much about this as you will already have your own unique and interesting content. To take this further, if you are a small business owner, it is wise to double-check that all content is unique. At the same time, this is a good time for you to read all your Web pages and make sure you took the time to write amazing, unique and interesting content that will convert visitors. Without a doubt, when you do this with care, you will not feel the effects of Panda or any other update. In fact, when updates occur, you will be the first to benefit as your site will fly by all the other ones with spam.

Links

If you run an established and well-liked business, you will, inevitably, enjoy plenty of free website links from others. When you run a business, over time, people will link back to your site when they enjoy your product or service. Other times, if you have been around long enough, you will not even have to worry about your linking campaign. This is true for large companies with a huge following. Sadly, in a bid to rise to the top, some foolish site owners would head to online message boards and other sites looking for answers. When doing so, many end up finding links and buying them from third-party providers. While this worked for a while, it will not work now. Luckily, as mentioned, a serious business owner with a viable and well-liked organization will have no trouble getting links without spending a dime. With this, he or she will rise in the rankings as it is easy to do so when one obtains high quality links over a long period. This is in stark contrast when compared with buying hundreds of links overnight and trying to game the system. With this, you may beat Google and your competition for a few months, but you are one algorithm update away from a huge drop in your organic search rankings.

Other factors

Without a doubt, when looking at your SEO rankings, you will notice some things help more than others. In the past, a lot of people who wanted to make a quick buck would build and design a site and use certain methods to rise to the top. By overusing keywords and getting a lot of links, some site owners landed on page one without effort. As mentioned, times have changed drastically, and a small business owner should embrace, rather than fear, this change. Now, when looking at your site and deciding your rankings, Google will look at a lot more than links and content. Instead, when deciding where to place your site, Google will look at your local and social media metrics. With this, it is hard for you to fake it and rise to the top. This is great news if you are a hardworking business owner who wants to make money and convert your website visitors into users. On the other hand, if you are trying to make fast cash with a website full of spam, you will have trouble. Simply put, now more than ever, Google looks at other metrics that favor an established business owner with a large following.

Slow and steady

By now, if you understand SEO and the recent and past updates, you should know that slow and steady will always win the race. For this reason, if you are a small business owner, you should concentrate on running your business and providing quality service to your existing clients. With this in mind, when it comes to your online marketing and SEO strategy, you should take it easy and make changes slowly. Google will notice when a website suddenly has dozens of links or a bunch of new content. When noticing this, Google will punish the site as it is unnatural for a person to get hundreds of links or followers on Facebook overnight. In fact, this will, realistically, only punish a person who wants to game the system. Remember, if you have a slow approach and take time to ramp up your online marketing and website strategies, you will not have to fear the wrath of panda.

Age

When looking at a site full of spam that somehow reached the top page, you will usually notice the site is not old. On the other hand, when you notice a site sitting on the top page for a long time, you will see that it is established. Think about it, if you own a site for a long time and offer value, you should not worry about recent and future updates. Instead, if you keep doing your work, you will succeed. For this reason alone, if you have an older domain and an established website, you should not fear any future updates. Instead, a site owner with an established business should continue his or her ways. On the other hand, a person who wants to game the system with a brand new site will face an uphill battle and is unlikely to win in the long-term.

A small business owner with a serious and well-thought-out plan should not fear the wrath of Google. No, instead, if you run a great site offering value to your visitors, you will have no problems. This is the case for many people who noticed their sites unaffected by recent updates. In fact, when the next algorithm updates happen, you will, provided you write quality content and have great links from relevant sources, pass up the other sites full of spam. For this reason, if you run a company and fear the next update, you should take a proactive approach as you will end up in a better position in the long run. Remember, algorithm updates are not out to punish honest companies that provide a great product. They are out to get people who try to game the system with spam.

The trend in long-tail keyword use in marketing strategy is largely the result of cost efficiency in advertising. Used as a cost conversion mechanism in search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising campaign, long-tail keywords reduce cost-per-click while increasing the number of click-through observations. By increasing the rate and quality of SEO and PPC response, long-tail keywords have been the subject of Web search engine providers like Google, as those companies attempt to improve long query proficiency.

The Power of Long-Tail Keyword Advertising

The concept of virtual crowd marketing establishes consumer equity at point of search engine keyword classification. Long-tail keywords from natural language searches online offer key insights into advertising conversion. When visitors observe SEO or PPC advertising spots, the decision to ‘click-through’ to a company website is a discerned one. If conversion of visitors to customers offers the rationale to strategic advertising placement, keyword precision is critical.

Long-tail keywords create a record of natural language searches leading to advertising engagement. Popular for building crowds of customers, long-tail keywords go viral more than any other keyword language taxonomy. Peer-to-peer sharing of a brand, its advertising, and website marketing collateral is more likely in response to long-tail keyword searches. Named after statistical long-tail distributions, the probability that long-tail keyword searches will increase the magnitude of advertising ‘click-through’ frequency is high.

Gaining popularity in the past several years, long-tail keyword advertising is especially agile in its ability to sell a volume of unique items, all under the same name brand. For instance, long-tail keyword advertising strategy is use by online retailer aggregators such as Amazon.com, and Yahoo.com to sell a range of warehoused, and third party goods.

Compatible with operations strategies designed to reduce distribution and inventory costs, long-tail keyword searches capture the most precise advertised item per search engine query. Companies can use reporting on long-tail keyword searches to control inventory and cut logistics costs according to the power law distribution or Pareto distribution theories.

Perfect for application in channel marketing strategies online, long-tail keyword placement allows for flexibility after an advertising campaign goes live. An apt method of creating modular campaign design in businesses where advertising is limited to a niche segment or where product lifecycle is abbreviated, long-tail keyword strategies allow advertisers to leverage user-driven innovation, social network analytics, and multi-scale marketing components in development of an online advertising campaign.

Long-Tail Keyword Strategies

The integration of long-tail keyword strategies in PPC advertising campaigns increases competitive advantage in niche markets. Designating channel advertising placement in niche segments of a market allows a business to target customers precisely where competitors are not. Equally, ratio of quality to cost can may influence the decision to incorporate long-tail keywords in a campaign.

The most efficient and effective keyword strategy for SEO and PPC advertising, long-tail keywords are the highest caliber search results, as the inquirer has added precision to the query. Long-tail keyword strategies are higher return on investment in marketing. With visitor volume expected to be low, on demand ‘click’ through payments structured by SEO and PPC advertising hosts add value to conversion.

Online marketing studies show that long-tail keywords are responsible for upwards of 80% of visitor conversion in a SEO or PPC advertising campaign. The fact that cost-per-lead is far less than average makes long-tail keyword marketing well-suited to market entry in competitive segments.

The ‘5’ Most Effective Long-tail Keyword Strategies

Expand market reach and advance conversion by following the five ‘5’ steps to long-tail keyword advertising strategy:

• 1. Query Reports

Prior to initiating a long-tail keyword strategy, the best method of building a taxonomy is by running an AdWords query report. Running a query on a recent AdWords campaign reports terms not already listed as part of a campaign. Using an existing Google AdWords account is the most expedient and reliable method of building a long-tail keyword list. Reflecting recent user observations, the Search Query Report offers important insights into aggregate response and keyword performance. Query results inform bidding as well. Comparison of competition levels for each keyword enables calibration of an ad campaign according to the highest performing keywords at a lower cost per conversion.

Competitor keyword reporting is critical for design-in of unique advertising content. The use of competitor keyword performance in a long-tail keyword strategy will assist in filling gaps in not covered by another similar advertiser. The benefit of tools like KeywordSpy, AdGooRoo and SpyFU, is that online advertising placement can be channeled to exceed competitor reach, or to generate traffic in segments where they are not. This also reduces cost of bidding. By identifying long-tail opportunities, advertisers can increase conversion and outperform competitors.

• 2. Keyword Localization

The localization of keywords increases foreign language syntax proficiency, as well as assists in the acknowledgement of demographic values. Appending keywords with location terms (i.e. country, state, region, city, town, zip or area code) AdWords Analytics reporting will provide metric reporting on ‘click-through’ traffic resulting from keywords searches. Include qualifying terms to add definition to localization information to maximize the reach of advertised product and service segmentation. Qualifiers used in long-tail natural language searches add new keywords to those results. Supplement keywords with add-ons and commonly used descriptive terms (i.e. color, style, model, type) to structure search syntax more narrowly.

• 3. Website Search Engine Record

Reported data from a website’s search box can add further information about what visitors are searching for. Google’s Custom Site Search box is a popular tool used in long-tail keyword queries. Investigation of a website’s search box often reveals unique information not accessible on a third party site. Review searches for terminology related to products, phrases, and map directions. Reporting of exact data from a website search box adds knowledge to a long-tail keyword strategy.

• 4. Search Engine Referral Traffic

Secondary referral traffic to your website offers another compendium of long-term keyword data. Indices of organic search referral traffic identify which keywords were searched immediately prior to y arrival at a website. Although some of this traffic will be categorized as “Unknown Keywords – SSL”, the benefit to secondary search engine data is that it serves as a simple random sample of a global population of potential consumers.

Much like a snowball sample designed to capture objective response from a large general population of unknown users, search engine referral traffic data offers a natural solution to this concept, generating data about long-tail keyword searches. Tools like HubSpot’s Sources Tool and SEOMoz report on secondary search engine referral traffic, including long-tail keyword search phrases. Analysis of volume of searches redirected to your site increases the chance that the long-tail keywords selected for an online advertising campaign will optimize marketing return on investment.

• 5. Cloud Content

Third party virtualization services can also be used to gather information about search engine content from a website. Cloud aggregation of website traffic data is continuous. Advertisers can source details about website performance at anytime from storage. Cloud-based visualization capabilities optimize long-tail keyword search data in graphical illustration. Reporting of visitor frequencies, as well as trend analyses of long-tail keyword searches from website traffic data found on a cloud, can be used by marketing specialists in creation of an online advertising campaign.

When you run a website and use WordPress, you can make a great blog that people from all over the world love to read. While this is a great outlet to use, it is wise to take a proactive approach to prevent problems such as too many blog comments or spam. Other times, you will have to deal with people who comment multiple times, either on purpose or accident. While it is easy to manually delete comments if you run a small blog and only make a post or two a week, it is a challenge when you run a larger operation and have a lot of blog posts and a busy comments section. Simply put, when you run a blog, you will want to weigh the benefits and downsides. However, when coming up with this plan, you must realize your ideas, strategies and business will grow. For this reason, you will want to come up with a comprehensive and practical solution. At the same time, you will need to devise a plan that works now. With this in mind, here are three ways to remove duplicate comments from WordPress.

Manually

As mentioned, if you have the time and patience, you should manually remove blog comments. To do this, a site owner should log in to his or her WordPress account a couple of times a day. Then, one should look at the comments and make sure users are not posting too frequently. When this happens, you should simply delete all the comments except the original one. Of course, if all comments are spam from the same user, you should delete all of them. To take this further, ideally, the site owner should block the IP address and not allow the user to comment on the blog.

With this, not only can you take an approach which allows you to remove bad users, but you can also avoid a solution causing you to delete legitimate comments. Either way, with a manual removal plan, you can enjoy the best of both worlds. However, if you are a busy webmaster and do not have much time, this is not an ideal solution. Think about it, if you have hundreds of comments a day, you will have a hard time manually removing duplicate ones. In fact, with this system, you would have to hire a person to remove excess comments. Either way, you must think of your long-term wants and needs when coming up with a plan.

When doing so, you will discover that manually deleting has limitations but is perfect if you run a small blog with only a small amount of followers. With that being said, this is the best approach if you want to plan slowly and think you may need to come up with an automated solution in the future. Simply put, when starting out, you can probably rely on this method without much trepidation.

Community based

Now, when people make a lot of comments in a row, you will want to take action. As mentioned, it is only easy to delete multiple comments when times are slow and you run a small blog. However, over time, you will probably want to think of a more comprehensive and effective solution. At the same time, while coming up with a strategy, you will not want to anger or hurt customer’s feelings by making them jump through hoops to make a comment or two.

Instead, with a community based plan, you can do a couple of things. For starters, you can employ a community flagging system. With this, other commenters can inform you of spam comments or multiple ones. This is the perfect solution when you have a lot of interested followers who care about your blog and want to help. While this is a great way to prevent long-term spam and duplicate comment issues, you should know it will still require you to manually log in and remove the duplicate comments. However, this is a great way to save time and allow you to do other things for your visitors. Not only that, with this approach, you will keep the visitor experience a good one as they will not have to deal with a burdensome and annoying approach to simply make a comment or two.

Remember, when you involve your current followers, you can take a lot of guesswork out of it and end up with the best solution for your needs. Again, you must attempt to make the user experience a good one and you can do this with a community based solution. In the long run, this is a great solution that will allow you to save a lot of time and money as you can concentrate on other pressing matters.

Plug-ins

Now, without a doubt, one of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the ability to use so many plug-ins. With many software applications available, you can run your blog and keep things in order with ease. With that in mind, you should consider a solution to your duplicate comment problems. For starters, you should, of course, manually remove some comments. However, as mentioned, most site owners should look for a complete solution.

One way to do this is to use a plug-in which prevents this in the first place. With a proactive approach, you will not have to deal with too many blog comments in the first place. But, it is wise to think about this more deeply as you will want to keep visitors happy and not frustrated. To do this, you must search for the best plug-ins for your situation.

With some software solutions, you can remove duplicate contents without any work on your end. Without a doubt, with this system, you will enjoy a few benefits. For starters, your clients will not notice a bunch of annoying blog comments. At the same time, people will not grow frustrated when dealing with prevention techniques many use.

If you run a blog, you must understand the importance of participation. Think about it, when visitors can make a comment or two you your blog posts, you can reach out and potentially reel a customer in. Other times, with comments, the site owner can gain interest in his or her idea or strategy. While this is true, if you want to have a comments section, you must police it wisely. One way which many bloggers do so is to force people to sign up for accounts or log in. This is annoying, and most will end up clicking the back buttoned of the browser. No, you need to take a proactive approach while still giving the visitor a decent experience. Remember, there are so many sites out there that you cannot afford to annoy users. With this knowledge, you must know how to proceed wisely. Ideally, you should come up with a multi-faceted approach, which allows you to keep the comments flowing and prevent a ton of spam or duplicate ones.

Luckily, with these three easy to follow tips, you can keep people coming back. They will not grow frustrated by reading mountains of duplicate comments by people who made mistakes or wanted to spam the blog comment section.

Bounce Exchange and OuiBounce both provide your website with an option to accept user enrollment to receive newsletters. A newsletter still provides one of the most effective ways to contact your customers and connect with them at a time when it’s most convenient to them. While social media sites have greatly improved the level of communication between you and your subscribers, certain disadvantages do still exist. A newsletter goes directly to the subscribers inbox, and people tend to review items sent by email more carefully than a status update posted on a business page.

Bounce Exchange Overview

Bounce Exchange works by detecting when a customer leaves your page and providing them with an offer to sign up or receive a free offer instead. This can help you sell more products, keep the customer on your page longer and turn a visitor that would otherwise abandon your page into a returning customer. While the product works and can increase the amount of traffic to your site over the long term, the cost of the service is simply astronomical and not affordable for many small business owners. In contrast, OuiBounce provides an open source alternative that allows you to interact with and connect with your customers without the high price tag.

OuiBounce Overview

The open source OuiBounce software provides everything you need to keep visitors on your site and coming back for more. The software was designed with ease of use in mind and provides a simple, and easy to customize platform for your website. Since the software is Open Source, you don’t have to pay to use it and like Bounce Exchange it exhibits intelligent behavior that allows your website to detect when a user is about to leave your site. The library can help you improve conversion rates by seven to 15 percent, depending on the type of website you operate. You can use OuiBounce to provide real value to your customers and give them something free just for signing up and returning to your website.

Helping Users Find Information

New visitors to your website can’t always locate the information your visitor needs and often, the first reaction is to click the back button when this happens. Before the visitor leaves, you can greet them with a pop-up that allows them to sign up for one of your special offers or provide them with a book he can download to peruse while not on your website. People appreciate when you offer free materials and can visit your website and download materials to peruse in their spare time. By providing them with a PDF booklet, or getting them to sign up for a special offer or newsletter you increase the likelihood that he will return in the future.

Types of Offers

When setting up your first campaign, your options are virtually limitless. As with Bounce Exchange, OuiBounce makes it possible to offer a free eBook, invite the visitor to come back and participate in a webinar, give a link to contact a customer service representative or even give the user a sample course to take in their free time.

OuiBounce is Open Source

Useful and relevant content directed at your customers is the goal of OuiBounce and with a community of Open Source developers, you can remain certain that the software will continue to develop and grow. Additionally, since the software is Open Source, you can edit and change the code however you like. Bounce Exchange is proprietary software that can’t be modified, distributed, or sold. Even if you don’t want to use the software on your website, you can modify it to include additional features and offer it to your site visitors as a free or paid download. Bounce Exchange is very similar to OuiBounce and functions as the commercial version of the product. Provided you don’t need extensive individual help setting up and configuring the software, you can use OuiBounce free of charge without the need to pay the hefty annual fees that Bounce Exchange charges.

OuiBounce Usage and Options

In coordination with other site monitoring tools, you can also set OuiBounce to alert visitors to your website after a set amount of time. Use Google Analytics or another site analytics tool to determine the average time spent per page and prompt users with a dialog box before she leaves. You can set the sensitivity of the software, turn on aggressive mode or create a callback to keep your customer engaged and active on your website. Rather than using the pay per user or campaign scheme of Bounce Exchange, you can use the software for free and provide a value added feature to your website.

Sensitivity

The OuiBounce software library provides a few simple options that you need to understand to get the most out of the library. Sensitivity refers to how far away from the edge of the browser the mouse must be before a prompt displays. If you put the sensitivity too high, you will lose visitors because the pop-up ad may display too quickly before they get a chance to view the website. Set it too low and they might leave the website before they have a chance to view your offer. Bounce Exchange provides a similar feature that intelligently determines when someone is about to leave your website. However, the added cost and system resources used by the software make Bounce Exchange a costly alternative in both time and money.

Aggressive Mode

You can configure OuiBounce to use Aggressive Mode to prevent ads from getting in your visitors way. Aggressive mode shows your advertisement only once per customer. This prevents your visitor from having to dismiss the dialog box each time they move the mouse to a certain position in the screen or visit a new page. Once you set up Aggressive Mode, you can feel confident that the user experience remains high by preventing a negative experience with your website. Users that have to constantly battle advertisements and free offers are less likely to return to your website in the future. Unlike Bounce Exchange, you can set this option with a simple code edit.

Minimum Timers

Setting a timer before a pop-up displays is a simple and straightforward process that can potentially add great value to your website. At the point when most users leave your website, you can gently guide your visitors toward your product or service or encourage her to sign up for your newsletter to get additional information in the future. By providing a simple form to provide a name and email address, you can increase the conversion rate and decrease the likelihood that emails you send will get returned or sent to your trash.

Choosing the Right Software

Website owners have to carefully manage their time, expenses and resources. Using a full-featured version of a product such as Bounce Exchange may actually hurt the effectiveness of your website. Too many database connections and data flowing between the website server and the visitor can impede the overall user experience. OuiBounce gets around all of this by using a simple, streamlined and effective library that can add an interactive element to your website. Before spending money on an expensive option like Bounce Exchange, it makes sense to explore the Open Source OuiBounce option.

Now, when you run a website, you should strive to have a serious and well-thought-out SEO strategy. With this, you can bring more customers to your website. Not only that, with organic clicks, a visitor is more likely to convert into a customer. Simply put, with SEO your business can thrive; without it, you will l have to spend a lot of cash getting people to your site. With this in mind, you must understand how to have the right mindset in regards to your onsite SEO. Here is the ultimate checklist for your onsite search engine performance.

Keyword density

In the past, a writer could write a lot of content and ignore the rules. For example, when selling shoes, some site owners would use the phrase “Nike shoes” dozens of times in a short 500 word article. However, when using it too often (more than 2 percent) you will end up angering Google as they will assume the content is nothing but spam. To combat this, you should go through all your Web pages and make sure your content is not too heavily relying on one or two main keywords.

At the same time, you should change the wording to similar keywords. In this example, a site owner should change “Nike shoes” to “Nike footwear” and so on. With this, you will not end up with a problem as Google will assume your content is legitimate, and not a simple attempt to drive traffic to your site. This is probably the number one reason many site owners saw their pages fall off the first page of Google. Simply put, when you try to game the system and trick Google, you will not succeed in the long run. No, with naturally written content, you will have a better chance at landing on the first page. At the same time, your customers will enjoy reading pages not stuffed of keywords.

Duplicate content

Without a doubt, if you have any duplicate content, you are going to struggle to gain in the rankings. In fact, if you do this, you may not have any traffic from search results. To test this out, you should head to Google and search some of the phrases in your content. If other websites show up, you will have a problem. Of course, if you have the money, you can also use Copyscape. With this, you can run your content through the system and make sure it is 100 percent unique. If it is not, you should change a few words and try to make it readable and interesting. Remember, Google came down hard on people who did this, and you must avoid duplicate content. The only exception is when you want to write a product description as it is often hard to avoid the same keywords. Either way, with a quick search, you should uncover your worst fears or confirm you do not have any duplicate content.

Speed

Believe it or not, if your pages load slowly, you will kill your SEO results. To check this out, you should head to one of the many online portals which allow you to test your site speed. Now, with this information, you will have to make changes. To do this, you should resize any large photos which hog bandwidth. Also, you should make sure your videos do not load automatically. Just as importantly, you need to check out your code and find any errors in it. With bad code, your site will load poorly, and you will have other issues. Fortunately, when fixing this, your customers will enjoy faster loading pages and your site will do well in SEO. Without a doubt, this is an often overlooked step. This is a serious mistake as you can catch your competition by surprise when you have a faster loading site than they do.

Titles

One overlooked aspect of SEO is the page title. At the top of every page, you should have a unique title related to your content. This is less important for the contact us page or other essential parts of your site. On the other hand, for product description pages or others, you will want to ensure your title works for the situation. For example, if you give music lessons, your page title should have words related to music lessons in it. Then, when doing this, Google will take notice and likely understand what your content is about. When done in the right way, you will have an easier time going up in the ranks as this is a huge metric google keeps in mind when valuing a website.

Links

Believe it or not, you can hurt your cause with a dead link or two. For this reason, you should go around your site and make sure all the internal links work. Luckily, there are online solutions; these allow you to check your site links in seconds. To take matters further, at least to make your clients happy, you should check out your external links and make sure it still goes to a live page. Often, it will not, especially if you link to a news article or some source that may change over time. Either way, when checking links, you can help your SEO outcome and please your customers who will grow frustrated when a link does not work.

Length

Sadly, if you have too little amount of content, you may not register much on Google’s radar. To change this, you should fill up your website with plenty of great content. To do this, you must try to have a lot of pages full of interesting information. Furthermore, make sure to keep your page length long. While it is okay to have a short page for product descriptions, you should keep other pages longer. If possible, most of your pages should have more than 500 words. With this, Google can accurately determine what your site is about and you can answer your customer’s questions.

Keywords early

If you want to gain the attention of a search engine, you should have the right keywords. Just as importantly, if not more, you should have your keywords in the top part of the content. By putting them in the first few paragraphs, you can show Google and Bing what you are trying to sell. Otherwise, if you put it way down at the bottom, you will have a problem as the bots crawling your site will not know how to value the content.

With this short guide, you will have an easier time improving your site and landing on the first page. While this is important, you must also understand how to track your results. For starters, you should know which keywords you are aiming for. Then, you should know where you are on Google. After a week or two, you should check your results and see if you have moved up or down. If nothing happened, do not worry, you may have to wait another month or so. Then, to take things further, you should make sure to track visitors as this will tell you what search terms they used and how they landed on your site. Without a doubt, when following this guide to the fullest, you will have great success on Google.

Many small business owners have built a website, and a large percentage of them have a blog on their website. However, a lot of business owners want to know how often they should be posting to their blog.

There are several reasons why business owners might want to know the answer to this question. One reason to keep a blog fresh is because the major search engines reward fresh content.

Another reason why a business owner might want to know how often to update their blog is because they want to keep new and existing customers satisfied. Fortunately, the answer to this question can be quite vague.

Posting one time per week

A lot of businesses are posting to their blog once every week. Every week, they create a new blog post and add it to their website blog. Small businesses have been doing this for quite some time, and for most of them, it appears to be working quite well.

Why post once per week?

There are several reasons why once per week seems to be the magic solution. One of the main reasons why this works very well is because it’s beneficial for maintaining customer relationships. It’s useful to view a blog as a courtesy call, and this call is sent to all of your profitable, important customers.

When a business owner releases a new blog post, he or she makes sure that the customer is thinking about their business. By posting a new blog post every week, business owners are actually strengthening their relationship with their customers.

Aside from strengthening existing relationships, a weekly blog post will also create a rhythm for the relationship that exists between customers and business owners. In many cases, it almost becomes a ritual. Customers will start to look forward to the weekly blog post, so they will check back at least once per week.

By creating a weekly blog post, the website owner is able to provide useful updates and information to his or her readers. Although this article is primarily for business owners, any website owner can benefit from a weekly posting schedule.

Get a feel for content

By posting at least once every week, website owners create a useful skill. When business owners force themselves to post every week, they’re building a valuable skill, and this skill enables them to constantly think about how they can provide more value to their customers. The new skill gives business owners a competitive advantage.

What weekly blog posts do

There are many benefits of doing weekly blog posts. Such a post can be used to set specific buying criteria. Website and business owners can use a weekly blog post to establish true credibility and authority. They can use weekly posts to explain why customer service is so important.

For search engines

Website and business owners want to keep the search engines happy. A lot of blogs receive the bulk of their traffic from the major search engines, so it only makes sense to want to keep the search engines happy.

It’s nearly impossible to find any conclusive studies that show a specific posting frequency significantly impacts search engine rankings. However, that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to start posting once per month. Search engines love fresh content, which is why they encourage website owners to update their blog frequently.

However, many people find it interesting that search engines look more closely at writing style than posting frequency. It couldn’t hurt to add new blog posts frequently. From an SEO perspective, there are several benefits to frequently updating a blog. Google absolutely loves fresh content.

By posting at least once per week, website and business owners can keep the search engine spiders coming back frequently. If the search engine spiders are frequently visiting your blog, then they will quickly index your new content.

It’s pretty obvious that content is what drives search engine traffic, so by posting to their blog regularly, website and business owners can increase their search engine traffic. Currently, many people have an infrequent posting schedule.

They might add one post to their blog and wait several weeks before adding more content. Even if you only post one new blog post per week, it’s best to maintain a consistent schedule because it will keep the search engines happy.

It’s great for sharing

There is something that webmasters can learn from the NBA. Basketball has a handful of top scorers, and there is a specific reason why these individuals score more often than most other players.

Put simply, it’s the players who take the most shots who score more than the rest of the players. This is also true for baseball players. Statistics show that the top-scoring baseball players also have the highest number of strikeouts.

Every new blog post gives webmasters the ability to score more points, but in the case of websites, points would be considered traffic. By posting a new blog post every week, website and business owners create more opportunities for their content to be shared, which increases online visibility.

What about every other week?

Many webmasters would like to post once every other week. Although they can post as often as they want, it’s almost pointless to post less than once per week.

A small group of individuals say they do just fine posting once per month, and while it might be working for them, posting once per week seems to be much more effective. If you imagine the main blogs that you visit, then you will probably realize that these blogs are updated every week. There are several other reasons why it’s important to avoid posting less than once per week.

Frequent blogging helps grow business

When you blog often, you’re effectively growing your business. Many studies show that frequent blogging has a significant impact on business growth. Frequent blogging attracts more leads and traffic, and there is plenty of data to back this up.

On average, updating a blog once per week provides double the amount of traffic than blogging less frequently. Studies also show that companies that blog more than 15 times every month can have as much as five times more traffic than companies that don’t.

Small business owners have the most to gain from blogging regularly. By posting at least eight times a month, companies can significantly increase their sales.

What is most important

Some people cannot post more than once every two weeks. What is really important is creating a posting schedule and sticking to it. Consistency is extremely important. At the end of the day, there is no magical posting frequency.

Since every situation is unique, the answer to this question is different for everyone. However, it’s best to post at least once per week. This is the frequency that seems to produce the best results for webmasters and business owners.

If it’s possible for you to post more often than once per week, then you should strive to do so, but it’s crucial to maintain a consistent level of quality. It makes no sense to post once per week if all of the posts provide almost no value.

Twitter is arguably the most popular and powerful social media platform of the day. Promoting your product or service on Twitter is essential in 2014, particularly if your target demographic is the 30-and-under group. Consumers expect to see relevant businesses successfully utilizing the platform to promote their brands.

Twitter now offers advertisers several options for promoting their brands on the platform. Promoted tweets, trends and accounts offer advertisers a wide range of opportunities for raising the profile of their products and services on the Twitter platform.

Promoted trends and tweets can display in the timelines of users who are targeted using several methods. Ads may be targeted to users who search for a specific term or hashtag. Ads can also be targeted to users based on cookie data stored in their browsers. For example, if a Twitter user visited a particular brand site that saved cookies in his browser, advertising software can be configured to respond to the user’s past visit to the brand’s site with a targeted tweet for the brand on Twitter.

Promoted Tweets

The most basic form of paid advertising on Twitter is the Promoted Tweet. A promoted tweet is targeted to one or more audiences, and the post is highlighted in users’ timelines. Promoted tweets can appear in users’ timelines as the result of searching for a particular hashtag or search term, or the ads can appear in timelines of users identified as being a member of a targeted demographic. Users do not need to follow the brand account to receive paid tweets in their timelines.

Cost-Per-Engagement

Twitter utilizes a cost-per-engagement price structure to charge for promoted tweets. Advertisers are only charged when users interact with the post. In other words, the advertiser only pays for the ad if users click on the post, reply to, favorite or retweet the post.

User Privacy

Promoted tweets appear at the top of users’ timelines when the page refreshes to accommodate new tweets. The “Dismiss” icon appears next to a promoted tweet so that users have the option to delete the tweets from view. Users can also completely disable promoted tweets by deactivating the option in their Twitter settings. Additionally, the Twitter platform supports the Do Not Track (DNT) feature, so users who have configured their browsers for DNT will not see tweets based on their saved cookie data.

Promoted Trends

Promoted trends are sponsored hashtagged topics that advertisers can purchase to expand their reach on the platform. Promoted trends display at the top of users’ Trends list on their timeline pages. The word “Promoted” displays next to the tagged term. When the user clicks on the hyperlinked term, a search results page with tweets tagged with the promoted tag opens. The user can then save the search by clicking the “Save” option in the upper right corner of the search results page.

Analytics

Twitter provides a unique dashboard for each promotion type. The dashboard provides the business user with analytic tools and performance indicators with which you can assess the performance of your campaigns.

Efficacy Comparison

Analysts report that tweets and trends targeted based on searches are more effective than tweets that display in users’ timelines. This assertion stands to reason because users who are actively searching for a certain topic will be more likely to respond to an ad promoting a brand relative to the topic they are researching. Note that targeted tweets based on searches receive considerably less exposure than those blasted to timelines of the target audience.

Promoted Accounts

Marketers can also advertise with promoted Twitter accounts. Promoted accounts are devoted entirely to a brand, and can be timeline-based or configured to respond to user searches, as well. Additionally, promoted accounts display in users’ “People to Follow” lists. The main goal for many with promoted accounts is to build a follower base for the brand’s Twitter account. Research shows that users who follow brand accounts are much more likely to engage with the brand, both on the platform and in terms of product purchases. One study found that Twitter users who follow a brand are 72 percent more likely to purchase the brand, and 85 percent of users feel more connected with the brand when they follow the business on Twitter.

Followers

When advertisers promote a brand account on Twitter, the goal of most is to attract followers. Followers are important to a brand’s Twitter account for a few reasons. First of all, accounts with a large number of followers get noticed on the platform. Studies find that 73 percent of users who follow a brand account do so to obtain timely updates about the product or service. Sixty-one percent follow a brand in order to provide feedback and share ideas with the company.

Beyond Followers

Promoted accounts get noticed even by those who do not follow the brand. Thirty-four percent of users in one study interacted with a small to medium sized business based on seeing the business’ Twitter handle in an ad. Moreover, 32 percent indicated that they would be more likely to use the business or purchase the product as the result of seeing a paid tweet.

Reaching a Target Audience

Twitter now supports advertisers’ CRM contact lists for creating targeted audiences on the platform. Businesses working with Twitter ad partners can cross-reference email addresses from CRM systems with addresses associated with Twitter handles. Promoted tweets can then be created to display only to these high potential leads.

CRM

If your CRM system collects Twitter handles or IDs from leads and customers, advertisers can utilize publicly available information, such as users’ profiles, followers list and public timelines to create a targeted audience list.

Twitter Ad Partners

Twitter works with several companies to provide integrated ad services to businesses of any size. As of early 2014, Twitter’s ad partners include:

• – Adara
• – AdRoll
• – BlueKai
• – Chango
• – DataXu
• – Dstillery
• – Lotame
• – Quantcast
• – ValueClick
• – [x+1]

Getting Started

Twitter provides an online tool to help advertisers get started promoting their brands on the platform. Just open the Twitter Business Start Advertising page in a browser and answer a few questions. Create a business account, or add advertising functionality to your existing account, if prompted. Provide payment information. You must have a payment source on file in order to create your first campaign. Identify where your business is located, and then select a general monthly budget for your digital advertising campaigns.

Take advantage of Twitter creative partners and advertising consultants if you need assistance identifying your target audience and creating a campaign that will generate a significant ROI. You also have the option of exploring the well-documented processes for advertising on the platform, then moving at your own pace to create and conduct your campaigns. Remember that, with Promoted Tweets, your account is only charged when users interact with your ad. Explore the possibilities and get your brand known on this year’s hottest, most influential social media platform.

The general opinion of guest blogging has dropped in recent years due to the distressing trend of spam guest blogs. Many blogs that publish guest posts regularly find themselves assailed by webmasters attempting to pay for dofollow backlinks, a practice which is strongly discouraged by the search engine king of SEO, Google. Accepting such a guest post can put your blog at risk of a penalty from on high. Thankfully, there are a few rules you can follow to protect yourself against these sorts of spammers.

First, a note: guest blogging is swiftly becoming a poor SEO strategy. For several years, it was a valid strategy to gain powerful dofollow backlinks from authority sites. Now, with the rise of spam in the guest blog world, Google is likely to remove most of the benefit that comes from these links, even so far as levying penalties against the worst offenders. However, this does not mean that guest blogging is a bad thing. It simply means that you need to be careful about the links in your guest blogs. Guest blogging is still a valuable tool for networking, exposure, branding and community formation. With that in mind, feel free to accept guest posts, just be cautious about their content.

Rule #1: Scrutinize the Author

When an author offers to write a guest post for your blog, the first thing you should do is search their name and look up two things. First, look into their own personal blog or blogs. What sort of content do they publish? If their content looks in any way low quality, you can bet that the content they provide for your blog will be of similar quality. If their content is high quality — that is, something you would want to see on your own blog — then you can open up consideration.

The second thing you want to check is if they have guest posted on other blogs. What is the quality of their other guest posts? It’s always possible that they try to outsource their writing, and the quality of that writing may vary. Guest posts may get the short end of the stick in these cases, so watch out.

Any author you accept to write on your blog must have a track record for high quality content, particularly content relevant to your industry and niche. You should also make sure they don’t use spammy tactics for linking. Your goal is to only publish content from authors who provide quality and depth in their writing.

Rule #2: Scrutinize the Links

You need to have a consistent link policy for guest posts. Some sites are known for stripping any and all links from the content they publish. Other sites will allow one or two links, and others will allow as many as the author can reasonably include without coming across as spam. The exact number of links should vary according to the quality and depth of the content provided; deep, well-researched content is likely to have more research citations, after all.

The basic policy should look something like this:

• • A minimum of two or three links. No maximum beyond the discretion of the writer
• • A maximum of two links to the author’s sites, including social media handles and personal blogs
• • As the publisher, you should reserve the right to remove any link that you deem suspicious or potentially detrimental, either to the content or to your site. Make use of this rule to remove any link that leads to a site that does not provide value to your readers. Use the same quality indicators you use for links in your own posts

Rule #3: Scrutinize the Content

What is the quality level of the content this guest author has provided? That’s the most important question you should ask once you’ve determined that you’ll accept anything at all from the author. No matter how good their reputation may be, you need to make sure each individual post is something you want on your blog. Ask yourself a few questions about the content on offer.

• • Is this content something I want to have published on my blog?
• • Is this content written about a subject that’s been done to death online already?
• • Does this content offer something new and thought-provoking to an ongoing discussion?
• • Is this content copied or spun from another source? (Use tools such as Copyscape to check)

You want unique, powerful content for your blog, even if the primary purpose of that piece is to provide a gateway back to the original author.

Rule #4: Own the Content

This rule is important for two reasons. The first reason is that you need to reserve the rights to any content published on your blog. Google penalizes copied content. Even posting content you own on two individual pages is enough to get that page penalized. If a guest author offers a piece of content without the guarantee that you own the content, they are free to post it on their site as well. Instantly, Google sees copied content and penalizes both sites.

Note that this doesn’t mean the content is attributed to you. Unless you paid for the content to be ghostwritten, the original author should still receive credit. Half of the point of guest blogging is to spread the name and brand of the original author, after all. You don’t need to take credit for their work; simple make sure they won’t repost the content elsewhere.

The second reason is to make sure that you’re the one in control of the content. This ties into another general guideline, which is to never give out author accounts on your blog. Even reputable blog authors may stoop to underhanded tactics when they are given control on a site, with the right incentives.

Sure, it’s a bit of a headache to go in and format a post to publish yourself. On the other hand, it guarantees that the author won’t come back in a few months down the line and add unwanted links to a piece, edit it in a way you don’t want, or delete it entirely. If an author is requesting an account on your blog, at best they don’t know what they’re doing. At worst, they’re trying to get an interior access so they can perform some kind of attack.

Rule #5: Encourage Community

Guest posts shouldn’t be content airdropped from a passing website. They should be thought-provoking, powerful pieces of content that foster a discussion and a community. This means they need to encourage community on your own site. It also means they need to encourage an interaction between your site and that of the author. Sending traffic back and forth for discussions is a great way to build a community.

Guest blogging is a powerful tool for building community, even if its power in SEO is fading. Google is not going to penalize your site for guest blogging, as long as you stay within the linkspam guidelines. Keep an eye on the content you publish, make sure it’s as useful as you can, and you’ll receive the full benefit of an interested audience.